An Open Letter to the Wife of My Mother's Ex-Husband.

Dear Madam,


It would be easy for me to call you trash. It would be easy for me sit on my leather couch, in my nice home, with my educated, productive husband and my gorgeous, excessively intelligent daughters and tell myself that I don't associate with trash. It would be easy to tell myself that I am a well-adjusted, well-respected, generally successful person, or even to chant to myself that I am a liberal feminist with an I.Q. of 155 who could wear your sons' testicles as garter belts if they tried to engage me in scholarly debate, if they did anything but mispell, misuse and name call. It would be easy sit in silence and console myself with the knowledge that there is not a single way in which I am not superior to you...but I've never been much for easy, anyway.


The truth is, I've always thought of you as a woman of average intelligence. My estimation in that regard has fallen somewhat now that I know you think you need an apostrophe to make a word plural. Still, it would seem that you are at least intelligent enough to know the story of your own life, and thusly, that you should know the sources of your shame. I will not add additional shame by recounting who you are and what you've done. I simply mean, here, to respond to some of the things you said, in public, on DW's facebook status, about me.


First of all, with regard to the assertion that I need to remember where I came from, I would like to reassure you that there is never a day when I forget. My husband says that I should not write this, now, and especially that I should not send it to you. He says that I am out of my hometown culture in my real life, and that I need to get out of it in my head. He is right. But I do not toil under the weight of guilt for abject hatred. I do hate that town, and several of its inhabitants--because I still care about it, because I still think it has potential, and because really, deep down, I believe people need to be delivered from its dominant doctrines. And, most of all, because I care about some of the people I was a girl with and I don't want to see them waste their lives in factories. As to the metaphysical implications which rest with that missive: I will never forget that I am the bastard child of a crazy woman. I will never forget that I am very odd, that I was trailer trash, that I use my intelligence to overcompensate, that I think more highly of myself than I ought. I assure you, ma'am, there are other things I will also never forget.


Secondly, it is true that I have never lived anywhere but Arkansas. I abandoned my opportunities. My siblings were still at home, you see. I felt my honor was more important than my ego. I felt loyalty to those to whom I found myself committed.


I have no doubt, however, that no matter where else you have lived, your mind stayed right at home, in Alma, in the smallness of the small town's delusion of grandeur. There are, after all, Almas all over the country. I am, in that respect, more well traveled than you--no matter where I have lived. You said that people from all over think I am a redneck. I don't care if they do. Redneck isn't about physical location, it's about the culture of ignorance. I am close-minded, yes, but no one could accurately describe me as ignorant.


With regard to your "medical license" as evidence of your intellectual prowess, I was very glad when my sister told me that, in your 40s, you had finally found a vocation. Kudos on making yourself better than you were before. I mean that in all sincerity.


I am sorry that you took offense to the term "Common Man." I thought I was very kind in my little concession speech. There is nothing wrong with being common. Most people are common. You should consider yourself lucky to be counted among them, and that here, on this blog, no one knows who you are and will be substituting some other common woman's face with yours. Maybe you will be lucky and they will use the face of someone who has moral fiber.


With reference to the last name: if I were you, I would fall before my feet and worship me, because someday, someone might mistake your youngest son for one of my relatives. I was the first good thing that ever happened to that name. I became so fond of the idea that my teachers praised me for surpassing my "dad," that I kept it. My legal name is hyphenated. I considered it "hailing the subject," a term which means to appropriate a negative word and reverse its meaning, applying it to oneself in a positive way. It, like you, reminds me of where I came from. I love to be reminded of how much I have overcome. There is no better food for my ego than thinking of you, of your husband, of your culture.


For the record, I did not call your son a redneck. I said his attitude caused him to be "stuck in redneck hell," which was not a slam. It was the truth. I do appreciate that you people all stand up for yourselves, even when it is not necessary. I was making philosophical conversation with an old friend from high school, before you all got country about it.


My husband says you are irrational, and a lost cause--that I am stooping to your level by writing this at all. I do not agree. I think you deserve to be confronted. I think you deserve to know that you are, in fact, important enough to be a blip on my radar--because you are the stepmother of my siblings, even if you never call them on their birthdays. So, no, I will not sit in silence and think that you are trash. I will not objectify you. I will say to you, straight up, that you are worth standing up to. Even if I have to stoop to do it. I will even say: Sometimes, you are right. But mostly, you are sad. And that you may have bullied my mother, but you will not bully me--on Facebook or anywhere else. I'm Jessica fucking B-W, with a good reputation, accomplishments, success, IQ, a savings account, and a nice, middle class life. Who the fuck are you?


Sincerely,


Jessica F. B-W.